1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a method of estimating a quantization parameter (QP), and more particularly to a method of estimating a quantization parameter for a de-blocking filter according to blocking degrees (BD) of a block-based frame.
2. Description of the Related Art
In technology of block-based image compression, such as JPEG or MPEG, the original images to be compressed are divided into a number of macroblocks (MB) with suitable size first and each macroblock is then treated as a unit to be processed by coding and decoding. The quantization operation in coding belongs to a step of loss compression. The higher is a compression rate, the larger is the influence of a quantization error on the decoding terminal. For example, the edges of the macroblocks, after decoded, may have color discontinuity and grid noise, which are called blocking artifacts generally.
In terms of the decoded block-based images, a de-blocking filter, which is a low-pass filter, is normally used to smooth the edge noise of the blocking artifacts. In a de-blocking process, a quantization parameter (QP) used in the coding procedure has to be referred in order to determine whether a high-frequency part of the decoded block-based images is generated in the quantization step and accordingly determine the filtering intensity to achieve a better de-blocking effect. The QP value affects directly the compression rate and when a higher QP value is used, the blocking artifacts generated will become more apparent.
However, when the decoded block-based images are de-blocked, the QP value is not recorded, and the present de-blocking filter just uses a preset value as a reference for the QP value. As a result, the filtering intensity cannot be suitably determined to obtain a better de-blocking effect.